BAKU, Azerbaijan, July 28. The European Union hopes that Azerbaijan will be a party of the Road Safety Observatory of the Eastern Partnership, the European Commission told TurkicWorld.

A source at the Commission noted that the EU and Azerbaijan have a well-established cooperation across the many fields of transport, including aviation, rail, road and maritime transport.

"This cooperation is addressed in the EU-Azerbaijan Transport Dialogue, which celebrated its first meeting in 2019. The EU looks forward to enhancing bilateral transport cooperation, notably through resuming negotiations of the Common Aviation Area Agreement, as well as at the regional level, through the establishment of the Eastern Partnership regional Road Safety Observatory in Tbilisi this year, to which we hope Azerbaijan will become a party," said the source.

The source went on to add that Azerbaijan also plays a key role as part of the agreed extension of the Trans-European Transport network (TEN-T) in the Eastern Partnership region and the implementation of the Indicative Investment Action Plan.

Road Safety Observatory serves as a formal network of government representatives and as a forum to share practices data, and information regarding road safety policies and action. But very importantly, it requires ownership of decisions at each country level.

The EaP Road Safety Observatory will support countries of the region in boosting their capacity to collect, analyze, and share reliable road crash data, with the objective to drastically reduce the number of road deaths and crash injuries in the region.